On the day that I write this column, I spend the first few hours of the morning cruising between news channels. It is a necessary exercise. This is a topical column, and I cannot afford to be tripped up at the end of the day by some major political event that makes the subject I have chosen irrelevant. This has happened a few times, so I need to be vigilant. My deadline last week was on the day that the Prime Minister spent more than half the morning at the Statue of Unity celebrating the 150th birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
India’s first Home Minister is so huge a hero for Narendra Modi that one of the first things he did after entering the exalted power enclave of Lutyens’ Delhi was to order that the tallest statue in the world be built of his idol. So, it surprised me not one bit that it was there that he spent the birthday of Sardar Patel. What did surprise me was that every single news channel was covering this event live from start to finish. It was not as if there was no other news. The day before there had been that meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, and suddenly our biggest enemy was chatting about friendship and trade with the man we have been wooing assiduously. Without much success.
I switched channels endlessly to see if there was any discussion of the implications for India of this very important meeting and found none. Every news channel was showing pictures of tribal dancers, BSF dogs performing impossible feats and tableaux of unspeakable ugliness from different states. In the background played songs of patriotism and praise of Sardar Patel. Since there was nothing else to watch, I found myself obliged to watch and noticed that the Prime Minister was thrilled with the spectacle and was smiling throughout and tapping his fingers to the beat of the songs.
He likes to tell us that we are whizzing along at top speed to become a fully developed country in less than 20 years, so it is time he noticed that this kind of spectacle belongs in third world countries. It belongs in those countries where leaders are so unsure of themselves that they demand displays of patriotism and national fervour. When Donald Trump decided to organise a military parade on his birthday last summer, I happened to be in the United States and was delighted to see how many people took to the streets in ‘no kings’ protests. I was even more pleased that respected political analysts wrote long articles about how it was not the American way to show off its military prowess in parades.
It should not be India’s way either. If we are the proud, confident democracy we claim to be, we do not need to organise parades to display our patriotism or national unity. And if we do feel the need to make spectacles of these things, can they please be in better taste? Frankly, the tableaux that float down from Raisina Hill to India Gate on Republic Day have become so infantile and tacky that it would not be a bad idea to cancel them altogether. It has become a tradition to have a military parade so let the troops and marching bands stay but can we cancel the state tableaux please? They will not be missed.
As for patriotism and national fervour, it has long been my experience that those who wear these things on their sleeve are usually those who are not sure that they are true patriots. In the old India in which I grew up, everyone I knew was deeply patriotic because it was so soon after the British Raj ended. And nobody needed to make a spectacle of it. Everyone was also very proud to be Indian, so no vulgar displays were needed. What is it about Modi’s ‘new India’ that everyone feels the need to wander about with their patriotism on public display?
In that old India, Nehruvian socialism had crippled our economy, so even patriotic Indians were compelled to flee abroad as economic refugees. This is still happening, and it is happening in tragic ways. Last week came the news that 50 young men from Haryana had been deported back to the motherland because they had chosen to get to the United States using the ‘dunki’ route. It astounded me that the touts who helped them escape from India were paid lakhs of rupees for their ‘dunki’ services. The young men who come back tell tales of terrible suffering and brutality, and yet they continue to go.
Does this make them less patriotic than those of us who stay or does it prove that ‘new India’ is not that different to that ‘old India’ that has been sought to be erased in recent times? I do not know. What I do know is that Indians who are patriotic in the real sense of that word rarely feel the need to say that they are. What I do know is that it is time for these spectacles of patriotism and dodgy nationalism to be ended. The most patriotic thing that can be done for our beloved motherland is for us to all participate in Swachh Bharat 2.0 and make our cities and villages look less filthy than they currently do.
